The Construction of the Rebus Sic Stantibus Clause in International LawException, Rule, or Remote Spectator?

Abstract

This chapter attempts to shed some light on the rule-exception scheme through the lens of the doctrine of fundamental change of circumstances in international law. In classical international law, the doctrine was considered either as non-existent, or under the guise of private law analogies or specially construed for the purposes of international law. The extent of the ‘exception’ to the ordinary law wrought by the clause was different in the context of these three versions: nought in the first case, related to specific treaties in the second, related to the entire legal order in the third. With the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) codification of 1969, the reach of the doctrine was reduced to an extremely narrowly tailored treaty-exception. Since then, the doctrine has rarely been invoked—even more rarely with success—in international litigation. The inroad of that exception has thus been progressively narrowed, if not extinguished.